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Environmental networking and policy advocacy are highly developed around the. Baltic Sea, having accrued decades of experience. Networks are generally ...
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Journal of Baltic Studies

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Networked Baltic Environmental Cooperation Stacy D. VanDeveer

Online publication date: 23 February 2011

To cite this Article VanDeveer, Stacy D.(2011) 'Networked Baltic Environmental Cooperation', Journal of Baltic Studies,

42: 1, 37 — 55

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01629778.2011.538516 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01629778.2011.538516

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Journal of Baltic Studies Vol. 42, No. 1, March 2011, pp. 37–55

NETWORKED BALTIC ENVIRONMENTAL COOPERATION

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Stacy D. VanDeveer Baltic regional environmental cooperation has existed for over 35 years, beginning as a rare attempt to institutionalize environmental and scientific and technical cooperation across the Cold War’s East–West divide. This history makes Baltic regional environmental cooperation one of the oldest and most active cases of international environmental cooperation, thus offering lessons for both scholars and practitioners of environmental politics. Baltic cooperation is extensive, including various manifestations of formal, informal, intergovernmental and non-governmental collaboration, primarily involving and driven by actors from the region, although external actors have also been recruited. The 1974 Helsinki Convention was the first regional international agreement to limit marine pollution from both land- and sea-based sources, whether air- or waterborne. It established the Baltic Marine Environmental Protection Commission, known as the Helsinki Commission or HELCOM. HELCOM sits at the center of the Baltic Sea environmental regime. The extensive cooperation HELCOM has nourished includes collaboration between and among states, IOs, and subnational, scientific and technological, private sector and NGO actors. These regional environmental policy networks revolve around general and specific issues addressed by HELCOM, ranging from broad strategies about how to clean up the Baltic Sea, to specific discussions about ports, coastal development, pollution from ships, techniques for modernizing water and waste water treatment, and so on. Analytical literature on international environmental politics has often focused substantial attention on international regimes and transnational networks (Bo¨rzel 1998; O’Neill 2009; Selin & VanDeveer 2009; Steinberg & VanDeveer, forthcoming). The Baltic region plays host to both a robust environmental cooperation regime and a burgeoning and unusually mature set of policy networks encompassing efforts to clean up and protect the Baltic Sea and its associated regional environment

Correspondence to: Stacy D. VanDeveer, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA. Email: stacy.vandeveer@ unh.edu ISSN 0162-9778 (print)/ISSN 1751-7877 (online) ß 2011 Journal of Baltic Studies DOI: 10.1080/01629778.2011.538516

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(Gutner & VanDeveer 2001; Hjorth 1992, 1993; Joas et al. 2008; VanDeveer 1997, 2000, 2002). Generally speaking, a number of important trends in Baltic regional cooperation stand out. These include deepening and expanding regional environmental cooperation, much of which occurs under the auspices of a regional anti-pollution treaty and the international cooperation regime that surrounds it. This regional cooperation incorporates multiple levels of governance across public, civil society and private sectors in a densely institutionalized and networked set of transnational relations. The region also displays growing, but asymmetric, regional economic and political interdependence, as well as a substantial increase in the role and influence of the European Union (EU). It must be noted, however, that, in most cases, Russia remains the least integrated of the region’s states and societies into regional multilateral cooperation efforts of all kinds (Selin & VanDeveer 2004; VanDeveer 1997, 2002). This article demonstrates the value of combining the interest in networks and their political influence seen across much recent social science literature, with analysis of the institutional and environmental outcomes associated with Baltic regional environmental cooperation. After briefly introducing the concept of networks, the piece turns to a set of empirical discussions of the roles played by HELCOM, the EU and NGOs within well-networked Baltic environmental cooperation. Latter sections turn toward analysis, examining what well-networked actors actually do within regional cooperation arrangements and what discernible influence such densely institutionalized networks have on institutional and environmental outcomes in the region.

Attention to Networks around the Baltic1 Over the last two decades, international relations scholars rediscovered policy networks, much as institutions enjoyed a resurgence in theorizing beginning in the late 1980s with a flurry of ‘new institutionalist’ approaches (e.g. March & Olsen 1989). In a world where global governance has become both more diffuse and complex, networks linking state and non-state actors, where participants pursue particular policy aims in policy areas within dense patterns of institutional relationships, have become a popular conceptual and analytical tool. A common thread running through the recent scholarship is that these networks generate distinctive patterns of political influence. Here, international policy networks are defined as groups of actors that include some combination of state, NGO, international institution and other interested public or private sector actors who converge around a formal regime or issue area in an active effort to promote particular policy outcomes. These networks may take a variety of shapes and forms, and may include bilateral networks linking transnational corporations and international organizations, or trilateral networks bringing together private sector, government and NGO actors (Keohane & Nye 2001). The networks are defined by the issue area they address, which means that a particular actor may be a ‘member’ of numerous networks. Furthermore, the definition used here assumes a rather heterogeneous membership.

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There is not one, single Baltic regional environmental network, nor even one regional network for combating marine pollution in the Baltic Sea. Rather, various networks play direct and important roles in developing and diffusing norms and sets of scientific and technical information about environmental priorities and ways of addressing them. However, the networks’ successes are more difficult to measure in terms of their environmental impact on the ecological quality of the Baltic Sea itself. Similarly, the networks’ records in producing widespread regional implementation of international environmental commitments remain mixed. The mature, institutionalized networks around Baltic environmental protection issues suggest that networks may be better at driving the distribution and diffusion of material and ideational resources than they are at producing ground-level implementation. For example, transnationally networked actors move information and material resources around the region, shaping consensus on scientific, technical and environmental policy issues, resulting in the issuance of joint ‘recommendations’ by the region’s states. Work on such recommendations has produced regionally standardized norms and principles (e.g. polluter pays, precautionary approaches, and emissions standards) and highly technical sets of regulatory practices for many types of facilities and industries. Yet, the networked actors are aware of their weakness on the implementation side. As a result the goals of the actors constituting the networks have also evolved over time, and are increasingly focusing on outcomes such as implementation review procedures, strengthening of existing domestic policies, and capacity-building exercises. Environmental networking and policy advocacy are highly developed around the Baltic Sea, having accrued decades of experience. Networks are generally horizontally organized, meaning that information generally flows between or across actors outside (or around) organized hierarchies. However, the highly institutionalized inter-state and transnational environmental cooperation seen in the Baltic region adds a greater element of hierarchy to Baltic environmental policy networks, largely because many of the networks are maintained by formal state, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. As such, the ‘mature’ nature of the regional environmental policy networks around the Baltic Sea gives them a relatively high degree of organizational structure and hierarchy. Various environmental policy networks discussed below are centered on a small set of influential intergovernmental organizations or on a host of active non-governmental organizations. Because issue areas are dynamic, overlapping and nested, so too are the networks.

HELCOM: A Center of Many Centers For over three decades the Baltic Sea has been the focus of multilateral and transnational efforts to protect ecological quality and ensure the continued production of marine resources. Bilateral and multilateral environmental protection arrangements for the Baltic date back to the late 1960s. Twice representatives of the Baltic littoral states gathered in Helsinki to sign comprehensive environmental protection agreements (first in 1974 and again in 1992). The 1974 Helsinki Convention was the first regional international agreement limiting marine pollution from both

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land- and sea-based sources, whether air- or water-borne. The 1992 Convention updated the 1974 agreement, expanding the treaty’s scope and strengthening collaborative environmental policy. The Baltic Sea environmental protection regime was constructed and operated across the ideological and strategic divide between East and West, becoming a model for other regional environmental protection regimes and conventions. Divergent political, economic and ideological systems, opposing military alliances, and East–West tensions made the Baltic Sea region a tough case for international cooperation of any kind. Regional environmental cooperation around the Baltic Sea emerged from a poor strategic climate. It was initially blocked by Western states’ refusal to even recognize the German Democratic Republic. In negotiating the 1974 treaty, some states in the region were so concerned with protecting their sovereignty and security that they exempted coverage of coastal waters, by far the most polluted, from the convention. The Helsinki Convention established HELCOM, which functions as a secretariat to administer and implement the Convention. It began operation immediately after the signing. During the interim period (1974–1980), Finland and Sweden provided the resources necessary to support the maintenance of international cooperation and remained leading states backing HELCOM’s development. The Convention itself came into force on 3 May 1980. Detailed analysis of the regional treaty negotiations and the many activities of HELCOM appear elsewhere (Haas 1993; Hjorth 1992, 1993; Koskenniemi 1993; Selin & VanDeveer 2004; VanDeveer 1997; Westing 1989). Though analysts do not all use the term ‘network’, these analysts agree that cooperation within groups that included Nordic state officials and marine scientists from around the region helped to drive state interest in establishing and maintaining early regional intergovernmental environmental cooperation around the Baltic Sea. Formally speaking, HELCOM is an intergovernmental organization, whose members are the states party to the two Helsinki Conventions. It is the secretariat for these conventions, administering the many meetings and programmatic activities under the auspices of the formal agreements among states (treaties, resolutions, declarations, recommendations, etc.). These roles place HELCOM at the center of broad environmental cooperation and environmental science efforts in the region (VanDeveer 1997). This makes HELCOM a source of, anchor for, or focus of a variety of environmental policy networks that have developed to address a range of issues including pollution from ships and ports, land-based pollution, and habitat protection. HELCOM’s many activities link international and domestic public sector actors to actors from environmental and industry NGOs and large donor organizations. HELCOM and its permanent committees and working groups operate on a onecountry, one-vote principle. Decisions must be unanimous. The main HELCOM policy instrument is the development of non-binding ‘Recommendations’ issued by HELCOM with unanimous support. Recommendations focus on both environmental policy content and regulatory practice, as well as on technical and scientific monitoring and assessment practices. The Recommendations are developed in the various HELCOM subsidiary bodies (working groups, committees, etc.). These bodies develop recommendation texts, usually led by a ‘lead’ country or organization, based on technical and scientific expertise. At the yearly meeting of HELCOM state representatives, the delegates decide whether a Recommendation should be issued.

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Well over 200 different HELCOM Recommendations have been formulated. Of those, over 110 remain valid and part of ongoing implementation and assessment efforts. Many early recommendations were either written into the 1992 Convention text, thereby making them legally binding, or they were superseded by later recommendations. Over time, Recommendations have tended toward greater stringency and precision. Over 120 HELCOM Recommendations have been entirely or partly superseded or supplemented by later ones, replacing earlier less stringent or less specific recommendations. Over the years, HELCOM and its associated bodies have grown in size, scope and specialization. In general, HELCOM recommendations are of a highly scientific and technocratic nature, often focusing on specific industrial processes such as leather tanning, pulp and paper production and wastewater treatment or on specific technical areas of environmental policy such as permitting and licensing procedures for a host of emissions sources and substances. Recommendations often include both emissions standards and process standards. For example, Recommendations on emissions standards of various hazardous substances have been issued for municipal wastewater and industrial sectors such as the pulp and paper industry, leather tanning and chemical manufacture. Such recommendations also stipulate permitting requirements, data collection parameters and licensing procedures. Recommendations are intended to influence state law and regulation. The growing number and specificity of the recommendation reflects the growing domestic and international interest in environmental protection in the Baltic region, growing transnational agreement on goals and a greater willingness and ability of the southern and eastern littoral states to engage in transnational environmental management. HELCOM’s small staff in Helsinki coordinates hundreds of meetings involving thousands of individual participants from public, private, NGO and intergovernmental organizations around the region. Individual participants, below the level of official state representation in joint policy-making capacities, tend to participate on the basis of their relative expertise (scientific, technical, legal, industry-specific, etc.). Most participating individuals are not employed by HELCOM (the staff of which is actually quite small), though many of them work for public sector bodies (at various levels of government) or publicly funded research and environmental monitoring entities. Individual participants share substantial quantities of information and material resources horizontally and vertically under HELCOM auspices and within their networks. Because HELCOM has a long record of pushing for more stringent regional environmental policies, policy advocates of all kinds seek to participate in HELCOM activities or influence various HELCOM participants. As such, HELCOM activities build and maintain a large regional network for environmental policy advocacy aimed at states, even as HELCOM’s participants and programs (below the level of official state decision-making) serve as objects of advocacy. Actors advocate policy positions for state policy at international, national and subnational levels. For example, some actors may be pushing state officials to support or reject various proposals within HELCOM decision-making arenas, or actors may be pushing states to adopt HELCOM recommendations or to better implement them.

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Like most intergovernmental organizations, HELCOM lacks formal enforcement powers and the convention makes implementation the responsibility of member states. Generally, states use national intergovernmental Baltic Sea committees or HELCOM offices to administer implementation of HELCOM decisions once they are written into domestic law and/or regulation (Velner 1989). The Commission does not formally monitor compliance. Rather, it coordinates environmental monitoring and national discharge reporting. Increasing ministerial-level regional cooperation and collaboration around the Baltic has increased the ‘thick’ institutional and organizational situation in Baltic regional cooperation. Peter Haas calls attention to regular ministerial conferences, every few years, as a ‘new institution’ in Baltic regional environmental protection (Haas 1993). These conferences generally garner media attention and result in new announcements of common goals, such as a call for 50% reductions in nutrient emissions into the Baltic Sea. Ministerial meetings over the last decade (in 2001, 2003, 2007 and 2010) all illustrate this pattern. However, environment ministers are not the only ones who now meet regularly around the region. In addition to regular Prime Ministerial meetings, ministers from Defense, Health, Transport, Economic/Finance and Culture, to name a few, hold high-profile conferences. Ministers use these meetings to leverage bureaucratic power at home, setting interim and long-term goals for common policies. Among the most important decisions taken at the Ministerial meetings was the 1988 joint ministerial declaration establishing a 50% reduction goal for emissions of nutrients and hazardous substances. Since 1998, most HELCOM activity and many of the subsequent Recommendations have been in pursuit of goals set at highprofile ministerial meetings. Ministers at a 1992 Diplomatic Conference adopted a resolution establishing, within the HELCOM structure, a permanent Programme Implementation Task Force (HELCOM PITF) to initiate, facilitate, and coordinate the implementation of the Baltic Sea Programme. As the permanent committee structure suggests, HELCOM’s activities are of a highly scientific and technological nature. This allows HELCOM to take advantage of the authority and legitimacy gained by the perception that it existed apart from, or above, the normative environment of international politics and the ideological clash between East and West. More recently, the 2007 Ministerial meeting in Krakow saw the launch of a detailed HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan, setting goals and initiating programs to substantially cut pollution in the region by 2021. At the 2010 Ministerial meeting, HELCOM countries presented implementation plans for the 2021 goals and passed a set of recommendations intended to further collective implementation of the 2007 action plan.2 These meetings are attended by representatives of dozens of other public and NGO organizations, and hundreds more are involved in the stakeholder meetings and discussions about goal setting and implementation. Baltic regional environmental cooperation is also densely networked and institutionalized beyond HELCOM. Tables 1 and 2 illustrate aspects of HELCOM’s centrality, as well as the quantity and diversity of involved organizations. Table 1 includes a partial list of active Baltic regional environmental protection initiatives. Perusal of the websites associated with the organizations listed in Table 2 helps to illustrate the diversity and high level of transnational activity in Baltic regional environmental politics. Regional Baltic environmental protection efforts constitute an

NETWORKED BALTIC ENVIRONMENTAL COOPERATION TABLE 1

Illustrative regional Baltic environmental initiatives

Organized Regional Network

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Baltic Regional Environmental Dissemination System (BEIDS) The Baltic University (a regional university network) Baltic Environmental Forum Group Baltic 21 The Baltic Sea Project Coalition Clean Baltic (CCB) Council of Baltic Sea States Union of Baltic Cities

Website www.beids.de www.balticuniv.uu.se www.befgroup.net www.baltic21.org www.b-s-p.org www.ccb.se/ www.cbss.org www.ubc.net

institutionally dense web of connections, including parliamentarians and other policy-makers, scientific and technical groups, advocacy NGOs of many kinds, and professional organizations from the region. These many overlapping networks and initiatives regularly interact with HELCOM activities and individual participants. Furthermore, HELCOM’s scientific and technical reports and the policy recommendations and requirements are regularly used by actors throughout the other networks and organizations. Table 2 lists just the official observers of HELCOM meetings and activities. Most are network-type organizations that include many members from across the region. The fact that many of HELCOM’s changes (including the inception of periodic ministerial conferences, the 1992 Convention, organizational expansion and restructuring, and the launching of a joint implementation program) occurred simultaneously yielded mutual compatibility and a sort of synergistic momentum among these changes. The HELCOM Secretariat and individuals within HELCOM subsidiary bodies (the central organizations of the regime and the bearers and promulgators of the regime principles and norms) directed much of the regime change through their participation in the inter-state negotiations (including drafting and redrafting proposals). Throughout these processes, HELCOM activities were at the center of dense regional networks of individuals and organizations, functioning both as a center of scientific and technical assessment and as a center for collaborative policy making.

HELCOM, the EU and Baltic Europe Baltic regional environmental actors and networks have also been shaped by the involvement of other international organizations (and a host of their constituent organizational bodies) including the EU. With the governance changes across the formerly communist Central and Eastern European and the former Soviet Union and the drive toward EU membership of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, the EU role in the Baltic region increased substantially. While the EU is hierarchically organized, its involvement in the Baltic region produces regional sub-networks, each centered on their various program areas active in the region.

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TABLE 2

HELCOM observer organizations

Governments and intergovernmental organizations Government of Belarus Government of Ukraine Intergovernmental Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic and North Sea (ASCOBANS) Baltic 21 – An Agenda for the Baltic Sea Region Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (BSPC) Bonn Agreement Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) The Great Lakes Commission Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) International Maritime Organization (IMO) Oslo and Paris Commissions (OSPAR) UNEP/AEWA United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE) World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe World Meteorological Organization International non-governmental organizations Alliance for Maritime Regional Interests in Europe (AMRIE) Baltic Farmers’ Forum on Environment (BFFE) Baltic Operational Oceanographic System (BOOS) Baltic Ports Organization (BPO) Baltic Sea Forum (BSF) Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO) BirdLife International BONUS Baltic Organizations’ Network for Funding Science (BONUS EEIG) CEFIC Coalition Clean Baltic (CCB) Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe – Baltic Sea Commission (CPMR) European Boating Association (EBA) European Chlor-Alkali Industry (EURO CHLOR) European Community Shipowners’ Association (ECSA) European Fertilizer Manufactures Association (EFMA) European Sea Ports Organisation (ESPO) European Union for Coastal Conservation (EUCC) EUREAU (European Union of National Associations of Water Suppliers and Waste Water Services) Global Water Partnership Central and Eastern Europe International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP) International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) Local Authorities International Environmental Organization (KIMO International) Sea Alarm Foundation Union of the Baltic Cities (UBC) World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)

The integration of EU organizations and institutions in the region occurs at multiple levels of environmental governance, from the ministerial level down into the national and subnational-level bureaucracies. In the environmental policy area, national and subnational authorities may have links to personnel or organizational

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bodies with the EU Directorate which administers and helps develop environmental policy (DG XI). Also, as noted above, the EU is a formal member of the 1992 Helsinki Convention. This places a voting representative from the EU Commission at the table with the state representatives on HELCOM. Furthermore, EU policy officially insists on the ‘harmonization’ of national environmental policy with EU policies as a condition of EU membership, which had an enormous impact on Baltic states’ environmental policy agendas (Carmin & VanDeveer 2005; Selin & VanDeveer 2004). In the Baltic region, these candidates include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. In all four of these states, environmental officials and parliamentarians have moved to bring their countries’ environmental law and regulations into line with EU policy (OECD 2000; Selin & VanDeveer 2004). Another arm of EU involvement in the Baltic Sea area is through its PHARE program of assistance to Central and Eastern European countries. PHARE, established in 1989, provides grants to transition countries, which for most of the 1990s focused on technical assistance projects such as studies, training, and technical advice. In recent years, the EU has provided environmental assistance only for projects and policies that contribute to the goal of approximation of EU legislation. PHARE is part of the broader donor network, and in fact PHARE funds often contribute to MDB projects, particularly through a Project Preparation Facility established by donors in Central and Eastern Europe in 1993 as a coordination mechanism to enhance aid efficiency. EU funds also paid for a recent report comparing EU and HELCOM policies and recommending amendments and changes to HELCOM Recommendations to bring them into line with EU policy (HELCOM 2001; Selin & VanDeveer 2004). EU programs, together with donor organizations and multilateral development banks, were actively involved in international cooperative efforts for the Baltic Sea, providing financing, for example, for individual projects, and to different degrees have also been involved in broader agenda-setting exercises such as the Joint Comprehensive Environmental Action Program (JCP) set up in 1992 and updated in 1998 under HELCOM (see Auer & Nilenders 2001; Gutner 2002). The JCP identified actions for the ecological restoration of the Baltic, and developed a list of over 130 point and non-point-source ‘hot spots’ within its catchment area requiring investments estimated at E10 billion. In these ‘hot spots’, wastewater was (is) often dumped, untreated or partially treated, into the Baltic Sea, where it has been a major source of pollution. An example of contemporary EU influence is the launching in 2009 of the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region. The strategy pulls together a set of environmental and development goals under the auspices of EU cohesion goals and initiatives. It coordinates co-financing from a number of EU sources with those from the region’s states and a number of other international organizations and development banks. By mid-2010 some 80 projects were included in the strategy. Of these, many seek to implement the HELCOM action plan and EU goals simultaneously around the region.

Baltic Networks and NGOs From the earliest discussions and debates about environmental pollution in the Baltic Sea to contemporary debates about the myriad environmental challenges within

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the region, transnational networks of scientific and technical researchers have been actively engaged and organized. These networks are often centered on professional associations and organizations, many of which have regular international meetings, workshops and conferences. Of particular historical importance are the Baltic Marine Biologists, the Conference of Baltic Oceanographers, the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES), UNESCO programs and committees and a host of pan-Nordic organizations and programs for international scientific and technical research and exchange. Many of these groups were first to develop policy networks and to begin to advocate regional international environmental cooperation around the Baltic (Dybern 1980; VanDeveer 1997). In addition to the scientific networks, regional cooperation, both multilateral and bilateral, exists among environmental activists and a multitude of professional organizations (such as port authorities, city officials and other subnational governing bodies). Table 2’s list of HELCOM observers identifies many of these groups. Importantly, these groups function as transboundary conduits for specific types of expertise and for values, principles and policy norms among the countries in the region (Heisler and VanDeveer 1997). Many of these groups engage in professional development or ‘capacity-building’ activities with their members, promote public environmental education, and compile and distribute environmental information. Transnational norms are diffused into domestic spheres through discourse communities and social learning within regional networks and organizations (VanDeveer 1997). Groups such as the Union of Baltic Cities, the ECOBALTIC Foundation, HELCOM PITF’s working group on Public Awareness and Environmental Education, and the Baltic Sea Region On-Line Environmental Information Resources for Internet Access (BALLERINA) initiative all have multinational NGO and NGO-public sector public awareness and environmental education programs. These programs include large and diffuse public awareness-raising and narrowly tailored education and professional training programs. For example, a number of state, university, intergovernmental and NGO organizations are coordinating ‘An Agenda 21 for the Baltic Sea Region’ to formulate and attempt to implement an action plan for sustainable development in the region. The initiative, like many around the Baltic region, involves public, private and civil society actors, seeking to enhance collaboration between diverse groups across all three sectors. As illustrated by the lists of HELCOM observers and larger regional environmental initiatives contained in Tables 1 and 2, regional organizations designed explicitly to build and expand regional networks and cooperation activities of all kinds are sponsored by groups of universities, intergovernmental organizations, environmental NGOs, Nordic states, and by a host of private sector actors such as the regional chamber of commerce and sector-specific industry associations. Subnational public officials participate in an extensive set of regional organizations and networks, linking public officials, private sector actors and NGOs in regional issue-specific networks around such issues as wastewater treatment, urban pollution, parks protection, ports management and pollution, and so on. Also, a small number of regionally organized networks focus on specific marine and wildlife species protection and management.3 Baltic environmental protection efforts constitute an institutionally

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dense web of connections, including parliamentarians and other policy-makers, scientific and technical groups, advocacy NGOs of many kinds, and professional organizations from the region. In addition, many regional groups and organizations are linked to larger pan-European and global institutions. As Kern’s contribution to this special issue makes clear, both the nongovernmental and intergovernmental initiatives have moved toward more concerted attempts to enact and engender sustainable development ideas over time, seeking to integrate environmental protection with broader economic and social development goals.

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So What Do Networked Baltic Actors Do? Analysis of Baltic environmental policy networks reveals a number of general (and overlapping) areas of actor activity within the complex and mature regional Baltic environment policy networks: (1) explicit policy and public advocacy aimed at all levels of formal public authority (subnational, national and international); (2) expanding the network and institutionalizing its interactions and linkages; (3) diffuse and disseminate resources, norms and procedures. These categories of political activity are certainly not mutually exclusive. In fact, at times they are directly related and overlapping. This categorization is driven by our interest in trying to measure multiple types of influence or outcomes of action within policy networks. For example, changes in state policy may be the result of explicit advocacy campaigns by actors within the regional environmental networks. However, such policy change might result from longer-term changes in the domestic environmental policy norms and the use of transnationally shared processes for gathering information or assessing environmental problems and policies. It is no surprise that policy networks engage in policy advocacy. In fact, it is almost tautological. However, analysis of the literature on policy networks in general and the Baltic case in particular demonstrate that policy advocacy is not the only activity in which actors regularly engage, nor is it the only one hypothesized to have influence on outcomes. Furthermore, various actors engage in quite different types of political advocacy aimed at very different ‘targets’. Individual and organizational actors within the regional networks engage in advocacy aimed at changing public policy at multiple levels of organized governance (international organizations, states, and subnational government bodies). Some actors do this by directly engaging government bodies and/ or specific personnel. For example, environmental NGOs and scientific researchers continue to push for reductions in phosphorus and nitrogen inputs from land and for higher standards and greater enforcement of regulation of pollution from the pulp and paper industries. Others do so by engaging in broad-based or carefully targeted education and awareness-raising campaigns. Such campaigns often attempt to alter materials used in public education and university curricula or to change public attitudes towards consumption, pollution, habitat protection, biodiversity and a host of other issues. Many of these campaigns also contribute to the ongoing social construction of ‘the Baltic region’ in the minds of publics and officials (VanDeveer 2004). When engaged in policy advocacy, actors create, organize, exchange and present information. They attempt to persuade their target audiences by enhancing learning and by altering normative understandings.

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Secondly, actors in the Baltic environmental networks spend a great deal of their time and resources expanding the networks and institutionalizing their links to one another. Over time, one can identify a clear trend toward increasing routinization and formal organization within the networks. Given the policy goals of most of the network actors and their need for material and information resources, it is generally in their interest to maintain and expand their ties within the network and subnetworks. This often leads, in the Baltic case, to the increasing formalization of networks into formal organizations with physical locations, small staffs, budgets and program areas and at least minimal sets of rules and decision-making procedures. Furthermore, the regional web of interconnected individuals, groups and organizations grows increasingly dense, with highly overlapping participation. The region has seen an increasing number of formally established regional organizations. Formal organizations yield many of the material ramifications of deepening regional integration and networking, including mailing lists and email lists and list-servers, websites, regular meetings of representatives and participants from around the region, increasing hierarchy among individuals and roles within the organizations, and shared decision-making procedures. The production of increasing amounts of information products (printed publications and electronic versions for example) makes the boundaries of the network ever more difficult to identify because (for instance) it is not possible to determine the total number of information users/ receivers. Finally, increasing institutionalization is also evident in the more abstract realm of social institutions such as regionally shared principles, norms and discourses. For example, the precautionary and polluter pays principles have been rapidly diffused throughout the region, having inspired the creation of pollution, consumption and resource extraction taxes and engendering changes in many states’ legal definition of pollution toward more precautionary and probabilistic definitions (VanDeveer 1997). The third locus of actor activity discernible within the Baltic environmental policy networks involves the regional diffusion or dissemination of resources, norms and processes (or procedures) among actors. Actors distribute material resources and information across the network. For example, NGOs in the transition countries regularly receive financial and technological support from their counterparts in the wealthier Baltic States such as Sweden and Germany. Various actors work within networks to solicit, raise, supply and/or expend material resources such as funding, physical equipment, in-kind services, expertise and data of various kinds. The offices of virtually all active environmental policy-makers and advocates in the region contain numerous directories of their respective counterparts around the region and a myriad of internationally sanctioned manuals for their respective areas of policy interest. Regionally networked actors also disseminate principles, norms and procedures for environmental policy and increasingly standardized organizational processes for activities such as information-gathering and distribution, fund-raising, and project development (Connolly & Gutner 2000). Such regional diffusion dynamics include dissemination of models for organizational development, policy advocacy strategies, public access to information and environmental policy implementation, thereby linking the diffusion activities to the advocacy and institutionalization activities discussed above.

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Networks Matter, But How? Tracing the influence of networks as an independent variable remains conceptually and empirically problematic. Analysis of regional environmental policy networks around the Baltic Sea suggests that networks ‘matter’ not by themselves, but as a resource for individual and organizational actors. Just as what network actors are doing changes over time, so do the various ‘outcomes’ of action within the networks. This article highlights three types of outcomes from regional environmental advocacy and cooperation: (1) the creation of new regional institutions and organizations, (2) the policy ‘outputs’ of formal policy-making bodies at multiple levels of governance, and (3) impacts on pollution levels and environmental quality. For over 30 years, environmental protection advocates (scientific researchers, environmental activists, and some state officials) have pushed national and international officials to create and maintain organizations for regional cooperation among overlapping groups of scientific researchers, national and municipal policymakers, non-governmental environmental activists and, more recently, private sector actors. VanDeveer (2000) argues that, in the earliest stages of regional anti-pollution efforts, actors are concerned largely with ‘getting organized’ for transnational and interstate cooperation. Here actors attempt to overcome significant political obstacles to multinational cooperation (such as high-level political conflict between states) and they tend to be focused on building common institutions for regularized scientific and technical cooperation, the provision of environmental policy advice, multilateral policy-making, and the construction of broad-based consensus positions (e.g. ‘the sea is being polluted by X, Y and Z substances’). In this stage, actors engage in activities analogous to those described by Keck and Sikkink (1998) in their discussion of human rights networks. That is, actors use the networks to define and increase awareness of ‘problems’. Establishing, maintaining and expanding the regional network are goals in themselves and means to attain other outcomes: namely, the construction of regionally institutionalized interactions around an issue area, the establishment of formal regional organizations for interstate and transnational cooperation of many kinds, and environmental protection. Networked Baltic regional actors have been tremendously successful at creating and expanding regional networks, organizations and common policies. After the initial stages of regional institutional construction around the Baltic, the ‘outcomes’ began to change. The regional organizations, with the participation of actors in the regional networks (and pushed by them), began to emit the ‘products’ they were designed to produce. These include internationally sanctioned scientific and technical datasets, reports and assessments, organized public education campaigns, lists of environmental ‘hotspots’, and sets of recommendations for state environmental policies. As noted above, the 25-year history of HELCOM alone has produced almost 200 detailed recommendations for state environmental law and regulatory practice. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, regional ministerial meetings were producing calls for dramatic 50% emissions reductions for a host of major pollutants. The periodic regional Ministerial meetings offer networked actors increased opportunity to focus media, public and policy-maker attention on regional environmental protection issues, goals and results.

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As the regional cooperation produced a burgeoning set of institutions and their products, actors in the growing regional environmental networks again began to change the content of advocacy. Since the 1990s, many actors have themselves been asking whether the now well-established regional environmental cooperation actually ‘matters’ in terms of state policy implementation and environmental improvement. The ‘outcomes’ of network advocacy are once again refocused. In the context of an increasingly dense web of regional environmental policy institutions and a growing set of products from them, focus shifts to outcomes such as implementation review procedures and reports, review and revision of existing common policies, technical and public sector capacity-building programs, and processes to assess environmental changes against established policies (VanDeveer 2000). HELCOM assessments have moved beyond aggregate pollution load compilations to the assessment and publication of the regional actors’ environmental policy commitments and the (frequent) failure to meet emissions reduction goals (HELCOM 1998). The massive amount of information assessed to produce the 2007 HELCOM action plan and the 2010 ‘Ecosystem Health of the Baltic Sea’ report, billed as the ‘initial holistic assessment’ of the regional marine ecosystem, further demonstrates the shift from merely compiling environmental data toward open assessments of the health and challenges to the region’s environmental quality and quality of life (HELCOM 2010). Over the last two decades, concentrations of hazardous substances such as DDT, PCBs, mercury, and cadmium have declined in Baltic marine mammals (HELCOM 1998, 2010; Selin & VanDeveer 2004). Populations of grey seals, ringed seals, harbor porpoises and some bird species appear to be recovering slowly, though mostly on the northern side of the Baltic. In part, this is attributed to gradually declining levels of hazardous substances. In addition, the exchange of technical and scientific information and knowledge on hazardous substances became commonplace, intensifying steadily following the signing of the 1974 Helsinki Convention, and expanding greatly after the collapse of state-socialist governance in the eastern Baltic countries. The 50% pollutant reduction goal on hazardous substances declared in the 1988 Ministerial Declaration set the target date of 1995. Most countries failed to meet this goal by 1995 (HELCOM 1998). However, HELCOM implementation assessments under the auspices of the Hazardous Substances Project Team declared the 50% reduction goal ‘largely reached’ in 2001 (HELCOM Project Team on Hazardous Substances, May 2001). HELCOM officials admit that this conclusion is based on a certain amount of judgment on their part, because of the many gaps in quantitative data regarding many of the substances. For example, baseline data for the late 1980s on which to base the 50% reduction targets is generally unknown for a number of the substances. The 50% reduction goal was determined to be achieved for 27 pesticides, at least three metal compounds (cadmium, lead and mercury), and PCBs. In fact, the 27 pesticides on this list are no longer in use (legally) in any of the countries in the Baltic region, though some uncertainties about this conclusion were expressed regarding Russia. Thus, not only was the 50% reduction goal reached, but the cessation goal for these pesticides (contained in recommendation 19/5) was also determined to by ‘largely reached’. This conclusion assumes, however, that necessary measures will be taken by states to properly store or dispose of existing stocks of obsolete pesticides.

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HELCOM assessments demonstrate the mixed results of the regional environmental policy efforts. Recent assessment bolsters the claims of many actors that the rate of environmental degradation has been slowed substantially despite the partial and uneven implementation of recommended environmental policies. Emissions of many hazardous substances have been reduced significantly (Selin & VanDeveer 2004), as have inputs of phosphates and nitrogen into the sea (HELCOM 2010). This is no small accomplishment, given the dramatic growth in economic activity around the region in the last two decades and the generally lackluster performance of environmental policy under the region’s Soviet-style governments. However, such assessment also supports many critics of HELCOM and the region’s states by demonstrating that, regarding most identified pollutants and environmental problems, regional environmental quality is not yet improving significantly (EEA 1998; HELCOM 2010; Jansson & Dahlberg 1999). Similarly, a recently completed study by Auer and Nilenders (2001) demonstrates that the first phase of HELCOM’s joint regional implementation programs has achieved substantial pollution reduction levels in many of the urban and industrial ‘hotspots’ targeted by the program, while other hotspots saw little improvement as a result of the program. The JCP’s performance was mixed. On the one hand, the JCP failed to meet many of the pollution reduction goals agreed to in 1992 for the first phase of the program, which ended in 1997. Pollution abatement performance for the 60–65 ‘hot spots’ where data were available show that the majority achieved less than 25% of the specified annual reduction goals for three contaminants: BOD, nitrogen and phosphorus (Auer & Nilenders 2001). Auer and Nilenders posit that some of this underperformance can be attributed to unrealistically high goals based on low-quality data and simplistic methods for judging performance. However, lower-than-expected levels of investment in the JCP and weak capacity in transition countries also contributed to areas of weak performance. For example, while HELCOM set a goal of 5 billion ECU for investments in the first phase of the JCP, only 1.6 billion was spent or allocated for cleaning up the hot spots (p. 12). On the other hand, the JCP was successful in reducing pollution load levels in a number of hot spots in Germany, Sweden, Finland and Estonia. In Estonia, for example, a World Bank-funded municipal wastewater treatment project in Haapsalu and an EBRD-funded project in Tallinn saw BOD5 emissions declining by more than 65% and 95%, respectively (Auer & Nilenders 2001). More generally, HELCOM’s latest assessment of the Baltic Sea also presents a mixed picture (HELCOM). For example, water quality has improved in coastal areas over the past 20 years, and concentrations of mercury and lead have also declined. Yet, levels of nitrogen and phosphorus inputs remain too high. Also of concern are rising levels of cadmium in herring, and the existence of an increasing number of unknown toxic contaminants.

Conclusions Baltic environmental cooperation is highly institutionalized at multiple levels of governance, including the following forms of cooperation: interstate (bilateral and

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multilateral), inter-bureaucratic, subnational-to-subnational (regional and local), scientific and technological, private sector and NGO. This extensive environmental cooperation therefore involves a large set of overlapping environmental policy networks in the region. These regional environmental policy networks have been successful in disseminating material resources and processes throughout the region, including their involvement in gathering and distributing information, funds and equipment and creating and diffusing norms about environmental priorities and ways of addressing them. However, the networks’ successes are more difficult to measure in terms of their environmental impact on ecological quality of the Baltic Sea itself. Similarly, the networks’ records in producing widespread regional implementation of international environmental commitments remains quite mixed. However, the causal connections that might be used to assess the relationship between network activity and environmental quality remain under-theorized in the literature. While the boundaries of networks are notoriously difficult to identify, this problem is particularly acute around the Baltic, where the various networks commonly interact with each other and can contain overlapping memberships. Furthermore, some networks appear to be nested in others. The literature on policy networks contains little discussion regarding whether or not such dynamics should be treated as one very decentralized ‘regional environmental network’ or many linked networks and sub-networks. If transnational networks research is to advance understanding of the relationship of international factors to domestic policy and behavior, then more attention to implementation issues will be required. Research on the domestic implementation of international rules and norms makes clear that international agreements do not simply imply themselves (O’Neill et al. 2004). Nor can one assume that states can, or will, implement them. Numerous factors may facilitate and/or inhibit implementation, including regime/agreement design, organizational capacities at various levels of organization, intervening domestic institutions, and the presence of implementation review mechanisms. What are the connections between transnational policy networks and implementation of agreed standards? Mediterranean regional pollution control efforts provide a cautionary tale. The Mediterranean region is home to a very active transnational environmental policy network (Haas 1990). Networked actors have been an important force in pushing for and creating a multitude of regional environmental protection organizations and institutions in the past 30þ years. Yet, in many cases little environmental improvement has been witnessed (EEA 1999; Kutting 2000; VanDeveer 2000). The Baltic regional environmental policy networks assessed here suggest some lessons for the conceptualization of policy networks common in contemporary scholarship on institutions and regimes. Many similarities exist between networks, institutions, and regimes, in terms of a recognition that they play a role in creating more horizontal patterns of global governance, and the existence of debates about their role in policy-making, their impact on policy outcomes, and ways of assessing their effectiveness. Yet the literature on the latter two is relatively more sophisticated, and has progressed from a focus on explaining their creation and assuming they result in efficient outcomes, to work addressing the normative and even pathological aspects of their work and behavior, and their impact on state behavior (Barnett & Finnemore

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1999). Ultimately, the existence of complex networks of relationships is not sufficient in ensuring efficient, effective policy outcomes. Yet, they appear to be important mechanisms in creating the shape of governance and as such deserve more theoretical and empirical attention. As Kern’s contribution suggests, transnational environmental networks for political action are proving to be important influences on sustainable development debates and initiatives across the region, but networked actors face substantial obstacles in their attempts to move political, social and economic institutions toward the realization of sustainability.

Notes

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1 2 3

This article draws on several years of conversation and a conference paper (Gutner and VanDeveer 2001). Any errors are entirely my own. All documents and declarations are available on the HELCOM website. The many websites listed in Table 2 contain many additional web-links to a vast number of these organizations.

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Heisler, M. O. & VanDeveer, S. D. (1997) ‘The Diffusion of Virtue? International Institutions as Agents of Domestic Regime Change’, Paper presented at the 1997 annual meeting of the Northeast Political Science Association, Philadelphia, 13–15 November. HELCOM (1994) Intergovernmental Activities in the Framework of the Helsinki Convention, 1974–1994, Baltic Sea Environment Proceedings (BSEP) No. 56. HELCOM (1998) Final Report on the Implementation of the 1988 Ministerial Declaration, Baltic Sea Environment Proceedings No. 71. HELCOM (2001) Harmonization of HELCOM Recommendations with EU Directives and OSPAR Decisions and Recommendations, Final Report, March 2001. HELCOM (2010) Ecosystem Health of the Baltic Sea: HELCOM Initial Holistic Assessment, Baltic Sea Environment Proceedings No. 122. HELCOM Project Team on Hazardous Substances (2001) The Implementation of the 1988 Ministerial Declaration on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area with regard to Hazardous Substances. Hjorth, R. (1992) Building International Institutions for Environmental Protection: the Case of Baltic Sea Environmental Cooperation (Linkoping, Sweden, Linkoping Studies in Arts and Sciences). Hjorth, R. (1993) ‘Baltic Environmental Cooperation: The Role of Epistemic Communities and the Politics of Regime Change’, Cooperation and Conflict, 29, p. 1. Jansson, B. & Dahlberg, K. (1999) ‘The Environmental Status of the Baltic Sea in the 1940s, Today, and in the Future’, Ambio, 28, p. 4. Joas, M., Jahn, D. & Kern, K. (2008) Governing a Common Sea: Environmental Policies in the Baltic Sea Region (London, Earthscan). Keck, M. & Sikkink, K. (1998) Activists Beyond Borders (Ithaca, Cornell University Press). Keohane, R. & Nye, J. (2001) Power and Interdependence (New York, Longman). Koskenniemi, M. (1993) ‘Environmental Cooperation in the Baltic Region’, Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law, 59, p. 1. Kutting, G. (2000) Environment, Society and International Relations (Routledge, London and New York). March, J. G. & Olsen, J. P. (1989) Rediscovering institutions: the organizational basis of politics (New York, The Free Press). O’Neill, K. (2009) The Environment and International Relations (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). O’Neill, K., Balsiger, J. & VanDeveer, S. D. (2004) ‘Actors, Norms and Impact: Recent International Cooperation Theory and the Influence of Agent-Structure Debate’, Annual Review of Political Science, 7. OECD (2000) Environmental Performance Reviews (1st Cycle): Conclusions and Recommendations: 32 Countries (1993–2000), OECD Working Paper on Environmental Performance (Paris, OECD). Selin, H. & VanDeveer, S. D. (2004) ‘Baltic Sea Hazardous Substances Management: Results and Challenges’, Ambio, 33, p. 3. Selin, H. & VanDeveer, S. D. (eds) (2009) Changing Climates in North American Politics (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press). Steinberg, P. F. & VanDeveer, S. D. (eds) (forthcoming) Comparative Environmental Politics (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press).

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VanDeveer, S. D. (1997) ‘Normative Force: The State, Transnational Norms and International Environmental Regimes’, Doctoral Dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park. VanDeveer, S. D. (2000) ‘Changing Course to Protect European Seas: Lessons after 25 Years’, Environment, 42, p. 6. VanDeveer, S. D. (2002) ‘Environmental Cooperation and Regional Peace: Baltic Politics, Programs and Prospects’, in Conca, K. (ed.) (2002) Environmental Cooperation and Regional Peace (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press). VanDeveer, S. D. (2004) ‘Ordering Environments: Organizing Knowledge and Regions in European International Environmental Cooperation’, in Jasanoff, S. & LongMartello, M. (eds) (2004) Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press). Velner, H. (1989) ‘Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission’, in Westing, A. (ed.) (1989) Comprehensive Security in the Baltic: An Environmental Approach (London, Sage Publications). Westing, A. (ed.) (1989) Comprehensive Security in the Baltic: An Environmental Approach (London, Sage Publications). Stacy D. VanDeveer is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of New Hampshire. His research interests include international environmental policymaking and its domestic impacts, the connections between environmental and security issues, and the role of expertise in policy making. He has received fellowships from the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He has received research funding from the US National Science Foundation, the European Union, and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (MISTRA), among others.

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